In recent years, the communication technique, especially the mobile communication technique, has been developing rapidly. The first generation mobile communication system to the third generation (3G) mobile communication system have been proposed in succession, so that the mobile communication has produced more and more significant effects on the people's daily life and work. Recently, the number of users of the mobile communication is continuously increasing, and various types of mobile services are released accordingly. As for this continuously expanded market, each large mobile operator in the world strives to attract and maintain the users of the mobile communication by quickly providing new mode services, thereby enhancing the competitiveness in the market.
Two solutions to realizing the new mode service exist in the prior art.
In the first solution, a new mode base station is added based on the original mode, so as to form an overlay communication network, which provides different mobile services for the users. The problem of this solution is that a large investment and operation cost is required in order to establish such an overlay network, for example, a large cost is required for purchasing equipment, acquiring a site, establishing the site, as well as network operation and maintenance.
The second solution is directed to a multi-mode base station type, in which one existing mode base station is reconfigured into a base station of another mode, or another mode is added for the base station of the existing mode, so that the base station is reconfigured into a multi-mode base station.
Briefly speaking, a multi-mode base station refers to a base station that supports more than two wireless air interface modes in one base station cabinet, for example, the wireless air interface modes of global system for mobile communication (GSM), wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), code division multiple access 2000 (CDMA2000) are supported at the same time.
During realization, base band boards of different modes are inserted in the same base band frame of the base station, so as to form a multi-mode base station. As for the realization method, fixed slots are assigned to different modes in advance. For example, the first to fourth slots are assigned to the WCDMA mode, and the fifth to eighth slots are assigned to the GSM mode. In different modes, radio frequency circuits between the base band boards and a radio frequency unit are also different. If the modes corresponding to the slots are fixed, the radio frequency circuits between the boards and the radio frequency unit are respectively set according to the mode for each slot.
For the multi-mode base station, when a new mode is added, the old mode board may be disassembled, and the new mode board is assembled into the corresponding slot, for example, the GSM board is disassembled, and the WCDMA mode board is inserted, so that one mode base station is reconfigured into a base station of another mode. Alternatively, the new mode module is directly inserted into the corresponding slot, for example, the WCDMA board is added to the base station already having the GSM mode board, so that the base station is reconfigured into a multi-mode base station, as shown in FIG. 1.
On the whole, the advantage of the second solution compared with the first solution lies in saving the cost of the sites and cabinets. However, the new and old mode modules do not have a uniform design, so that the common problems of the two solutions are as follows.
Firstly, it is relatively inconvenient to reconfigure the mode including adding and deleting the mode. Secondly, the resource is somewhat wasted, and cannot be shared.